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New Jersey Transit Commuters Ask: Who Moved My Chair?

May 20, 2015

Relocated: your poor, tired ass. Believe it or not, Penn Station just got even more uncomfortable!Village Voice photo

Commuting by train is one of life’s great joys, someone said never, but there are little perks that help ease the burden: A cup of hot coffee helps, and a newspaper or book to pass the time. And, while you’re waiting, a place to sit down.

For those who must avail themselves of New Jersey Transit out of New York’s Penn Station, that last modicum of creature comfort and human dignity vanished without explanation earlier this month. Adding insult to, well, insult, the extraction — which removed every single seating surface on the terminal’s main concourse — took place not long after the transportation agency announced proposed fare hikes that would add nearly 10 percent to the average straphanger’s daily outlay.

The move is not particularly well-timed, as NJ Transit is likely on the verge of a 9 percent fare increase for rail, light rail, and bus service. And that’s in addition to potential service cuts — including the elimination of a late-weeknight train to Rockland County — to help close a $60 million shortfall in the 2015–2016 budget.

So commuters are bound to be extra-pumped about paying more to sit on the floor.

Maybe the seats were pawned for some quick cash?

Turns out no.

An NJ Transit spokeswoman says the seats were merely moved to make the main waiting area less congested. It was not, she makes clear, done to reduce loitering.

Of course, that doesn’t quite jibe with the notice the agency posted on the walls, on bright-yellow paper, every few feet above where the benches used to be: “One-Hour Ticketed Seating Relocated.”

The spokeswoman emphasizes that the overall number of seats in the terminal remains the same. They’re just in a different place now.

So far, anecdotal evidence — which is to say, “glancing around” — would seem to indicate that New Jersey Transit customers have responded to the change not by moving their buttocks to the upper level, but by plopping said keisters on the stairs and the floor in the main corridor.

A careful observer might conclude that a passenger waiting for a train prefers to do so in the closest possible proximity to the main access point to the train platform.